Few people today doubt the market’s contribution to prosperity, but still there are powerful intellectual traditions opposing the market. The market’s current critics fear not so much that it will fail to create prosperity, but that it undermines morality and community.

Markets, Morals and Community contains three essays on these fears. Alan Hamlin’s “The Moral of the Market” looks at various ways in which we can evaluate market institutions. Andrew Norton’s “The Market Mentality” assesses empirical evidence on what markets do to social ties. Herbert Hiersch’s “Economic Morality as a Competitive Asset” suggests ways in which market mechanisms encourage moral behaviour.

These essays suggest a much more complex relationship between market institutions, morality and community than is assumed by many of the market’s critics.